Ditton Wine Traders’ fine wine blog

By now, everybody who sells Bordeaux en primeur – the newly released vintage that is always tasted from barrel the first week of April – will have descended on Bordeaux. As I have commented in my blogpost of the 23rd of March, this year is slightly different. Different in that Farr Vintners will not be attending this year. For those who didn't know: Farr is the biggest en primeur buyer in the UK.

If you were the number 2 buyer of Bordeaux en primeur (my estimate), what would you do in reaction to such a bold move by your main competitor? Would you follow suit? Would you join forces in an attempt to bring the release prices down? Berry Brothers & Rudd have decided differently: they will go. Moreover, referring to their main rival not going, they state that "We have always felt that our role is to be the link between the people who make the wine and the people who drink the wine, so we would be doing our customers a disservice if we were to take that stance". For the full Berry's article click here. 

It turns out to be a more and more interesting en primeur campaign. Yes, pricing is an obvious and hotly debated issue. With the current economic climate, weak sterling and the overpriced 2007 and to a lesser extend 2006, it is right to ask for a significant lower release price. But, let's forget about pricing for the moment. Let's focus on the quality of the 2008 vintage.

The initial media coverage on Bordeaux 2008 was clear: it was not going to be a good vintage. In their defence, the Bordelais said that, once again September saved the vintage. Everybody else wasn't buying it, seeing that this has been the story for a number of recent vintages now. However, there are more and more voices saying it will indeed be a good to very good vintage. The weather seems to have favoured the right bank, so particularly Merlot seems to have done well. Sylvie Cazes, president of the Union de Grand Crus Classes, has even been quoted that 2008 is definately superior to 2006 and 2007 and is in fact close in quality to 2005....

We will know soon. Robert Parker will have finished his tastings by now, along with other well known wine reviewers. 

But, to come back to pricing, seeing that the whole point of buying en primeur is to either profit from prices going up once the wine is physically available, or to get an allocation in the first place, release prices are crucial. So, is the whole tasting circus relevant – will it matter?

Farr seems to think that, this year, it doesn't: if prices are too high, nobody will buy and therefore there's no point in buying en primeur or indeed going to taste (apart from  the political motives). Berry's makes a point to the contrary: if you offer en primeur B'x, you go and taste it because you don't let your customers down.

Are Ditton Wine Traders going to Bordeaux? No we are not. Until now, we never have. We don't need to. We do buy into allocations of wine that we think are good value, but not by tasting and spending, in our view, unnecessary money. After all, does it matter to you if Ditton Wine Traders (or indeed Farr or Berry's) taste the wine? Does that add any value to tasting notes of Parker, Jancis Robinson, the Wine Spectator etc? Through some close partners, we secure allocations of the best selling wines and because we work on such low margins, we are able to offer these wines at lower prices than most other merchants.

The bottom line? If 2008 turns out to be a vintage worth buying en primeur, we will offer a small list of the most "tradeable" wine and we will offer them at prices that are below Farr and Berry's. Keep an eye on our list:www.dittonwinetraders.co.uk/wines.asp.